DRIES van Noten is fashion's answer to Wong Kar-wai. Like the Hong Kong auteur, the Belgian fashion designer is known for his innovative and inspiring shows, which are closer to art installations than catwalk presentations.
In 2002, a veil of 300,000 fairy lights descended for the finale of his spring/summer 2003 womenswear show. The next season, an enormous wall of disco balls formed the backdrop to his autumn/winter 2003 womenswear collections. In 2004, to celebrate his 50th runway show, female models catwalked on a 140m long banquet table after a three-course dinner had been served on it by 200 waiters.
In July this year, van Noten showed his spring/summer 2008 menswear collection at the Duomo cathedral in Milan, illuminated only by more than 1,000 candles.
On Thursday night, fans of the designer here were treated to the latest in a long line of spectacular extravaganzas. In a souped-up disused army barrack in Tanglin Village on Dempsey Road, van Noten presented his spring/summer 2008 womenswear collection - the same one that was shown in Paris in September at the Grand Palais - to more than 700 guests.
To the tribal beats of a live percussion ensemble, models showed 52 outfits - all resplendently coloured and textured - against a backdrop that can only be best described as industrial-spartan chic.
Costing more than $1 million to produce, the show was one of the highlights of a charity gala dinner held to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Club 21, the homegrown fashion empire started by fashion tycoon-cum-hotelier Christina Ong.
In an interview yesterday at his newly opened boutique at the Hilton Hotel Shopping Arcade, van Noten described his collection saying: "It was a simple, straightforward message - I wanted to do flowers. I wanted to reinvent the way I use prints, to find new concept of prints and modernise old floral prints."
The designer was here on a four-day trip especially for the occasion.
Just as his catwalk shows eschew the conventional and the cookie-cutter, a Dries van Noten boutique is different from Antwerp to Amsterdam. Ditto the Singapore boutique, which opened last month. Costing close to $2 million to furnish, it took design cues from his 10-month-old Paris boutique at Quai Malaquais on the Left Bank, opposite the Louvre.
The 1,800 sq ft Singapore store is filled with antiques and objets d'art - including van Noten's favourite: a pair of Japanese armchairs and an oil painting by Belgian artist Floris Jespers - handpicked from flea markets in Paris by van Noten and Patrick Vangheluwe, his partner of more than 20 years.
"I'm not fond of the idea that when you travel the world, you see the same window display, the same message and the same collection inside a store everywhere you go. In the past, it was different but people are travelling so much more. It's more fun to have completely different concepts and style for each store," he said. "It's the same philosophy as each collection - I don't want to force a style and silhouette on my customers. I propose options and possibilities, and they take what they want to wear."
His shows and stores may say much about his original aesthetics and sensibilities. But they are also a telling reflection of what makes him unique in the fashion business. Here is a modern and radical spirit at play - no It bags or must-have shoes every season. Sales of accessories contribute to only about 7 per cent of his bottom line.
Neither are there lucrative bridge and resort lines, perfume and sunglasses deals nor a massive advertising budget - van Noten prefers to invest in his biannual menswear and womenswear shows instead.
Yet, it's a business model with a reported annual turnover of 30 million euros (S$63 million) and boasts more than 400 stockists worldwide. The man retains complete control of his label - rare in a business ruled by luxury conglomerates such as Louis Vuitton-Moet Hennessy and the Gucci Group.
Just as his fashion empire is modest by big-brand standards, van Noten, too, is equally modest and charming in person. Like his clothes, he is handsome in an understated and refined way. Dressed in his signature crisp white shirt and pin-striped jacket, the 50-year-old shy Belgian is sincere in his answers and has a dry reserve.
If he seemed a little distant, it could be because he dislikes all those air-kissing histrionics and would never promote himself in such a way.
Unlike his flashier counterparts, such as Alexander McQueen or Karl Lagerfeld, van Noten is also no master of sensational soundbites. He lets his clothes talk to his customers.
And if his garments could actually speak, they would tell a story of a designer whose style evolves quietly rather than one who churns out changes, piling on detail after detail, season after season. For the uninitiated, his signature style - often described as "eclectic poetic bohemian" - is his intelligent use of colours, prints, fabrics, beadings and embroideries, inspired by ethnic and folklore influences. Such consistent style sensibilities, he explained, are born of his intense dislike of fashion as something seasonal with a six-month lifespan.
"For me, fashion is not about uniform or dictation," he said. "People have enough personality and sense to make their own selection out of trends and dress the way they want. At the end, it's not about disguising people. It's about showing people who they are and their personality with clothes."
He added that whatever he shows on the runway is all available for sale, unlike most designers who often produce one-off catwalk only pieces. "I'm a little naive but I don't like the idea of showing things that you don't sell in a store. It's not being honest to the client. For me, fashion is something that people can enjoy and wear."
If van Noten seems to have been destined for a career in fashion, it is because he has fashion coursing through his veins.
His grandfather owned Antwerp's first ready-to-wear store for men. His father started an up-market emporium in the outskirts while his mother collected antique linen and lace. As a boy, the young van Noten would accompany his father to textile trade fairs and fashion shows in Milan, Paris and Dusseldorf, where he would hone his sartorial aesthetic and develop a gimlet eye for details.
In 1976, the 18-year-old entered Antwerp's Royal Academy of Arts, where his fellow students included Martin Margiela, Ann Demuelemeester, Dirk van Saene, Dirk Bikkembergs and Walter van Beirendonck. In 1986, five years after their graduation, all of them travelled in a van and showed in London under the name Antwerp Six.
The collective soubriquet was created only because they thought no one could pronounce their respective names, recalled van Noten. With their moody but clever clothes, the Antwerp Six took the global fashion establishment by storm.
Barney's in New York was van Noten's first client from that London outing - they ordered his menswear collection in the smallest of sizes for their womenswear department. The designer remains one of the American department store's best sellers.
Though his career has not always been a bed of roses - there was a time in the early 1990s when his designs were dangerously at odds with fashion's obsession with overt glamour and branding - currently, his is a modest but profitable business. And van Noten has no plans to expand artificially, preferring the business to grow organically.
"In the late 1990s, when all the big conglomerates were taking over and looking for independent designers, I thought maybe I had to follow and that was the future," he recalled. "But it's not how I want to do things. I like to choose my own way forward. I want to create something that I personally like a lot."
Lionel Seah is the managing editor of L'Officiel Singapore
